After a year living in a vegetable oil powered Volkswagen and one and a half years living in the Mojave desert Chantale is finally in Japan for her art exhibition. The Saga continues...

Monday, February 5, 2007

Hongcouver!

Started installing the show on Thursday. The gallery, Blim, is a delight! Yuriko teaches screen printing and other classes there almost everyday. We have a really obvious aesthetic affinity so me and Blim are a natural fit. I went in there around the 15th of January and said I’d like to do a show and they said “How about February?” So I went home to Portland and two weeks later I was back to install. It seems as though it was all meant to be. Yuriko said she wishes my show could stay up all the time! Sweet!

I had to take my Van into the shop so Eva drove me to the gallery and helped me do some set up. We went for lunch at Hakata on Broadway. I chose it because I wanted to review some hybrid restaurants for the zine and Hakata serves Japanese/Vietnamese food. In my best case scenario I was hoping for tempura Pho or some crazy combination like that but it was really just a restaurant with a Vietnamese menu AND a Japanese menu. We ordered Bun Cha Gio Chay, vegetarian imperial rolls with rice vermecelli and Futomaki, Dynamite roll (no mayonaise!) and 2 pieces of saké nigiri for me. The sushi was better than the imperial roll, which was pretty greasy and served on a plate of warm noodles, the only salad was some brown iceburg and 2 cucumber slices. Lame. Normally it is served in a bowl which has a salad of red leaf lettuce, shredded cucumber and carrot, mint, peanuts and sometimes pickled onion with cold rice noodles and imperial rolls on top.

Thursday night I stopped in at the Legion on Main street and ran into Jeremy Deighton and Derek Sheplawy, both from Victoria. We had a great time talking and catching up. Jeremy and I talked about really old times in Victoria. I have known those 2 since I was 14! I interviewed Jeremy for my zine project and it was quite beautiful, what he had to say. He'll be in the first issue, about BC. Jeremy and I shared 2 pints of Rickard's Red (apparently old veterans don't like good beer, because that is the best one the Legion serves) and then I drove his giant truck up to the Honey Hut. I was going to drive Jer home an crash at his place but after 20 minutes wating for the truck to warm up, by the time we got to Main and 48th Jeremy was sober enought to drive home.

Friday morning I discovered I’d locked myself out of the gallery so I went to Bean around the World coffee shop to kill time. I ordered a Soy Chai Mocha and the girl at the counter said “Are you from Victoria?” that’s the funniest thing I heard all week! I like Bean around the World because they have good tea and they try to recycle everything. Nobody there gives you a hard time when you ask for a real glass instead of a paper cup for water.

Friday night I took a break from the gallery and walked over to Alex Morrison's house, he's another friend from Victoria. Alex and Lucy had come from somewhere else and I think they may have drank a bit of booze. I drove Lucy’s car home to the downtown Westside and slept in the extra bed at her place. I was thankful to have a dark, quiet room and I actually slept in til 9 am. In the morning I walked from Lucy’s to Granville station, stopping at London Drugs to get a new memory card for my camera. Made it to the gallery by 10:30 and edited the video I shot to display in the window of the gallery.

Since I have no DVD burning super drive on my computer I was planning to transfer the video to Andrew’s computer and burn it on his drive. In order to do so I went back to London drugs on Broadway to buy a firewire cable and some DVD’s. Arrived at the Honey Hut at 5 pm with 3 hours left to get this video working. Got it transferred to the other machine and then discovered that Andrew’s copy of iDVD does not work properly so I was unable to burn a disc. You know, if I have learned anything about making art shows it’s this: There will always be one thing that doesn’t work. By that time anyway, I was starting to feel the stress of the show and I knew that if I tried to make everything perfect I would have a meltdown. I also knew that if I could just sit down and eat a big bowl of noodles that I would feel so much better!

So, I did some laundry so I would have a clean shirt to wear to the opening. I had slept in the same clothes for 3 nights, which is actually unusual, even for me. Eva lent me her car to go to the gallery and I stopped for veggie pho at Vietnamese restaurant on Main street.

Super friendly service, they are one of the only Vietnamese joints in Vancouver that I know of that make veggie soup and imperial rolls. The vegetables were a little over cooked but the broth was good and served quickly. I considered going to Hawker's Delight across the street, which is a great, cheap place to eat Singapore/ Malay style noodles and street type food. I also always love the tofu curry at Mui Garden, also across the street. That block of Main street is one of the best areas for food in Vancouver. However, I knew I wanted noodles and I knew the Vietnamese place had the veggie hook up. I also knew that the nice man there will bend over backwards to make you what you want and PLUS I got a parking place right in front!

1 Comments:

Hey - if you know where on earth Derek Sheplawy is, wouldja have him get ahold of me? I'm a friend of his from Seattle, ca. 1993. My last name was changed in 1998 to Gunn, but I think he'll remember Thaddeus. Thanks.